"The sun, as the expression of old world energy, is torn down from the heavens by modern man, who, by virtue of his technological superiority, creates his own energy source"
About this Quote
As an artist of the Soviet avant-garde, Lissitzky is speaking from inside a project that treated design as an instrument of history. His circles, diagonals, and hard-edged geometries weren’t aesthetic games; they were visual training for a new kind of citizen, someone who reads the world as constructed and therefore alterable. The “technological superiority” line carries the movement’s characteristic swagger: progress as proof of legitimacy. If you can engineer power, you can engineer society.
The subtext is both utopian and anxious. Creating “his own energy source” sounds like emancipation from nature’s limits, but it also hints at Promethean overreach: man not merely harnessing forces, but manufacturing them, replacing the given with the made. That’s the modernist bargain in miniature: trade the comfort of cosmic certainty for the thrill (and burden) of total agency.
Read in its moment, it’s propaganda with genuine artistic conviction. Read now, it lands differently: a prescient snapshot of the century that followed, when the dream of self-made energy became the politics of grids, extractive power, and planetary consequences.
Quote Details
| Topic | Technology |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Lissitzky, El. (2026, February 16). The sun, as the expression of old world energy, is torn down from the heavens by modern man, who, by virtue of his technological superiority, creates his own energy source. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-sun-as-the-expression-of-old-world-energy-is-122110/
Chicago Style
Lissitzky, El. "The sun, as the expression of old world energy, is torn down from the heavens by modern man, who, by virtue of his technological superiority, creates his own energy source." FixQuotes. February 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-sun-as-the-expression-of-old-world-energy-is-122110/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The sun, as the expression of old world energy, is torn down from the heavens by modern man, who, by virtue of his technological superiority, creates his own energy source." FixQuotes, 16 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-sun-as-the-expression-of-old-world-energy-is-122110/. Accessed 4 Mar. 2026.
